his is delicately put under cover of my health and the fall
fishing; but we all know that you and Jim want looking after more than I
do, and that bigger game than trout is to be caught. Tell me what you
want me to say to him and do with him, and I will start at once." Some
women might stand that, possibly, but not the ones I am used to: such
would be eminently the way not to attain my benevolent end. No, no; you
can do nothing in such cases without finesse, as Jim calls it, and
strategy, and tact, and management; and if you have not these gifts by
nature, you must acquire them, whatever they may cost. I still hold to
my principles; but I don't propose to run them into the ground. In
morality, as elsewhere, a little too much is apt to be worse than much
too little; and theory and practice are very different things, not to be
rashly confounded. You want to hold the right theories, and then to live
as near them as depraved mundane conditions will allow. The manly
weapons of which Jane spoke so scornfully last night are the right
ones--when you can use them. In the case in hand, to tell all I know
would have been at any time, and would still be, impossible and ruinous.
Hartman is not so far out on some points: as he says, we did not arrange
the present scheme of things, and could not be proud of it if we had.

You may say, and I could not deny, that my diplomacy, such as it is, is
not always employed for the benefit of women only. Hartman is a luminous
and transparent soul--too much so for his own good: why did I practise
occasionally on him? I can explain that best on general principles.

In a world a majority of whose inhabitants are female, demoralization
has naturally extended far and wide, till strict veracity has become
unpractical. The first falsehood (after the serpent's) must have been
humiliating to him who uttered it, and a fatal example to those who
heard; but mankind soon grew used to the new fashion. I pass over the
rude barbarian ages, whose gross and inartistic lying offers no claim to
respectful and sympathetic interest, and no excuse but the lame one of
selfish depravity, common to the race. But with the inroads of
civilization Life became complex, and Truth was found too simple and
rigid to fit with all its varied intricacies. That is, when Truth _is_
simple. "Don't you think my baby beautiful?" demands a fond parent. "No,
I don't: far from it." That is the truth; but its naked and repulsive
brutality dem